WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the US is focused on the war with Iran, Ukrainian advocates and members of congress are highlighting an ongoing humanitarian crisis: the thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children.
In between the US Captiol and the Washington Monument, this message stood on the National Mall: “Putin abducted 20,000 Ukrainian children. Bring kids back.” When you take a step closer, you’ll see red, white, brown and maroon teddy bears that form the message.
“Here we can see 20-thousand teddy bears,” said Kateryna Lisunova, media advisor for Razom for Ukraine. “Every single teddy bear is representing a child kidnapped and abducted by Russian Federation. I think it’s a visual example of how many children we are talking about because if you go through this installation, you will feel how long it is and how many children’s lives we’re talking about. Those are only the numbers we know. The real numbers are much bigger.”
Razom for Ukraine, the organization that helped put this together, said the installation was created over five days.
“When you touch a teddy bear, it’s one child missing,” said Lisunova.
While the world’s attention is on the US war in Iran, some Ukrainian advocates are worried the Trump Administration will turn their focus from Ukraine. We asked Rep. Michael McCaul (R- TX), the former Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who was at the installation’s rally, how he keeps the Administration focused and encouraged on supporting Ukraine:
“The way I would keep them focused is the way I got Congress to focus on this in that you can’t separate our adversaries,” said Rep. McCaul. “You can’t be against communist China but be pro-Putin. You can’t be against the Ayatollah in Iran and yet be somehow pro-Putin. That makes no sense to me because they’re all in this unholy alliance together.”
Organizers hope they can showcase this installation in different states for others to realize how big a humanitarian problem this is.
“We don’t know what their conditions are, what is happening to them because they’re in Russian territory and Russia abducted them,” said Lisunova about the abducted children. “So, it’s very important to take a moment and think about it that we’re talking about that many children we only know about.”
